


Picnic in the Sky

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Series: Finding Myself (And Maybe You) [4]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian Worries In The Distance, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Family Dinners, Gen, Humor, M/M, On The Flight Home From Jedha, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stranded, Team Bonding, Team as Family, discovering feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9335906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: It’s not Cassian's fault that the hyperdrive breaks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for longer than I meant to, but hello! New addition to the series! There'll be little additions here and there, but I wanted to explore another team building moment, and stranding the crew in space seemed the best way to do that. (I'm only partially joking.)
> 
> I hope you enjoy the piece! XOXO

It’s not his fault that the hyperdrive breaks.

Cassian sits heavy in the co-pilot’s chair of their U-Wing, swearing under his breath as the stars outside his viewport grow still, their blurred tails disappearing into the blackness of space. Jedha’s sand is still stuck in his throat, but he refuses to cough; instead, he swears again, kicking the control panel and listening to it sputter in response.

“We are six days away from Yavin IV,” K-2SO reports, voice both blithe yet tired. “This places us out of the range of the Imperial fleet, unless they have pursued us. I must run several calculations before being able to determine the range of the Death Star, but there is a seventy six percent chance that we are out of its range, as well.”

Sighs of relief echo from around the ship’s cabin.

“That’s not a guarantee,” K-2SO reminds them. “There’s still an equally high chance of us getting stranded out here. We’re still in Imperial space, you know.”

“Kriff - kriffing hell,” the pilot – Bodhi Rook, Cassian remembers, having spared a glance at his wanted holos – stutters out. “Are all rebels as optimistic as you?”

“I was not programmed to be optimistic,” K-2SO shoots back. “I am an Imperial security droid. It’s my responsibility to be pragmatic.”

Cassian rolls his eyes and runs a hand through his slightly greasy, vaguely dusty hair. He ducks down, missing a sly comeback from Bodhi, and peers at the underbelly of the ship’s navigational console. After several moments of unsuccessfully poking at the wires, he feels a form slide in next to his. He raises an eyebrow as the pilot pulls on his goggles (only after wiping them free from dust), but he doesn’t say a word.

“Let me do this,” Bodhi says, his mouth drawn up into a thin line. “You’re only making it worse.”

Cassian’s eyebrow creeps higher. When Bodhi glances over, Cassian watches him visibly shrink. “Sorry,” the pilot mutters, looking away.

“He’s right, you know,” K-2SO says. His gears creak as he crosses his arms over his chest. “Bodhi Rook is more likely to have the specific knowledge necessary to fix the hyperdrive than you are, Cassian. If you impede his work, the likelihood of our returning to Base One drops to thirty three percent.”

“Thank you for your input, Kay,” Cassian says. He gives Bodhi another once over, then rises from his crouch. Bodhi offers a brief, apologetic thumbs up before burying himself in the console. Cassian watches him for a long moment, then moves to stand awkwardly halfway between the control panel and the back of the ship.

The guardians are sprawled out on the U-Wings cold floor, their backs pressed against one of the ship’s walls. The blind man – Chirrut, if he heard correctly – tilts his head when Cassian’s gaze passes over him, his mouth twitching upward, though he doesn’t quite smile. The assassin at his side glowers and pops a clip out of his heavy repeater; the gun lays half disassembled in his broad lap. Cassian assesses it from a distance, then looks away with a respectful nod.

Jyn Erso, the last of his crew, is sitting on the floor some several feet away from any other party on board. Her eyes are closed; there’s a trickle of blood dripping down from her forehead that’s just beginning to dry. Cassian quietly catalogues the state of her skin: bruising, dirty with a mix of blood and dirt, all off it too messy to make much sense of at all.

(Saw Gererra had been a man Cassian had only ever seen in holovids. His impassioned speeches were…something: blood tingling, rousing, sure, but there had always been an air about him that made the hairs on the back of Cassian’s neck stand up. His blood, though, intermingles with Jyn’s, now; it spattered across her skin just like the dust of Jedha.)

“I’ll have to try and contact that Alliance,” he says, more to himself than anyone else in the cabin. “If they know our location, they’ll be able to send someone out to help us.”

“We’re drifting at a rate of 4.76 miles per second,” K-2SO reports. “Without an increase in speed, it will take us fifty two to reach the rebel base.”

Cassian doesn’t roll his eyes, he really doesn’t, but he _thinks_ about it. He runs a hand down his face and grimaces at the grit he knocks aside.   

“I’ll contact the Alliance,” he says again. “Then, if one of you wants to help, we can go below and divide up the rations.”

He turns around the moment Jyn Erso opens her eyes. Bodhi lets out a grunt from beneath the control panel, but no one word distinguishes itself from his general mumbling. Cassian waits, still, for either of the guardians to respond.

“I could help you,” Chirrut says, at last. There’s a wryness to his voice that leaves Cassian fumbling, fighting back the quirk of a smile that threatens to overtake his lips. The assassin – Baze Malbus – snorts for him. A gentle smacking sound echoes through the cabin; Cassian doesn’t turn to see what part of Chirrut Baze has hit, but he still shakes his head as the monk gently complains.

“You stay here,” he hears Jyn say, instead. “I’ll help the captain.”

Cassian doesn’t grimace at her use of his rank. He glances towards her for a brief moment and catches her gaze flickering away from him. As his body jolts, awkwardness shedding as he moves towards the comm, Jyn winces, pulling back and making herself smaller. It takes a concentrated effort for Cassian not to freeze where he stands. He continues walking, however, eventually settling himself in front of the U-Wing’s comm system.

His message to General Draven is brief: _Stranded in Imperial space. Requesting orders_. The encryption he makes use of is not his most complicated, but it does the job before he sends the request zipping through space. Cassian keeps his headset on for a little longer than necessary after the message has been sent. He doesn’t expect a quick answer; rather, he presses his forehead against the cool metal just above the comm system and breathes. The dust of Jedha remains thick in his throat. It dulls his tongue and leaves him wanting for water, wanting for the green jungles and gentle chatter of Yavin IV.

“Jedha was not always so tumultuous,” he hears Chirrut say.

Cassian doesn’t open his eyes.

“Baze, do you remember,” the monk asks, “several years ago – the ball tournament between our temple and the one on Tattooine?”

Baze grunts, but doesn’t respond.

“A terrible game.” Cassian assumes Chirrut shakes his head; if nothing else, the monk clucks his tongue in disappointment. “I was hoping for more of a challenge. Then again, all was as the Force willed it, then. So it is, now.”

“The Force didn’t win you a Gooth ball game,” Baze grunts. “Your cheating did.”

When Cassian _does_ open his eyes, this time, it’s to catch sight of the slyest grin he’s ever seen in his life crossing the blind guardian’s face. “There is no cheating the Force,” Chirrut says. “There is only listening to one’s surroundings and the movements within them.”

“Tell that to Dim-U monks,” Baze mutters under his breath. When he looks up and catches Cassian’s eye, his scowl grows deeper. “Chased us into the bunks and held us hostage for two days,” he says.

Cassian offers up his best approximation of a sympathetic grimace.

“It was all in good fun,” Chirrut replies.

Cassian’s headset chirps; he looks away from the cabin at once, closing his eyes as Draven’s message is relied.

_Sending pick up from Alderaan. Retrieval time: two days. Copy?_

Cassian keeps his face as still as he can, forces his shoulders to remain relaxed. He takes the headset off of one ear as he turns back to the rest of the cabin. “It’ll take them two days to get us,” he tells them.

Chirrut remains peaceful. Baze rolls his eyes. Bodhi, half-buried, lets out a grunt of acknowledgement; his boots don’t give away the same ticks that his face does, so Cassian lets it slide.

Jyn doesn’t look at him.

Cassian’s gaze lingers on her the longest. When he earns no response, he slides his headset back on again.

_Copy._

The headset clatters back down its hook without another word. Cassian steps away from the wall and runs a hand through his hair. When his thoughts don’t clear and his frown doesn’t loosen, he looks, once again, towards Jyn.

“We should head below,” he tells her. “Rations won’t count themselves.”

She doesn’t smile, but then again, he isn’t enthusiastic enough to turn the phrase into a joke. K-2SO lets out a rattling sigh as Cassian starts to move towards the ladder that leads below deck.

“At least make sure she doesn’t have a blaster,” the droid says. “I’ll be fine, no matter what happens to us, but I do believe that General Draven would appreciate it if you, at least, Cassian, came back in one piece.”

This, of all things, earns a snort from Jyn. Cassian, half turned around to respond to K-2SO, freezes as she does.

He doesn’t know what she sees, looking back at him, but the upward curl of her own bloodied mouth is enough to make some of the strain in his shoulders drop. It’s just a muscle’s worth, but the looseness that comes to him makes the breath leave his chest. Jyn looks away from him after a heartbeat, maybe sooner, and slips away, down towards the ladder that’ll lead them below deck. Cassian follows behind her, his pace loping, only pausing to shoot a backwards glance towards K-2SO at the controls.

The droid is shaking his head, too busy, it seems, to bother returning Cassian’s gaze.

Jyn slips down the ladder with practiced ease, her feet hanging free as she drops. Cassian doesn’t hear her land, but he doesn’t look for her when he goes down, either. The leather of his boots squeals against the metal, and he winces as he lands, but it’s a negligible discomfort. He brushes his bangs away from his eyes as he settles.

Jyn, he sees, is dragging her hands along the side of the ship, fingers bouncing over the seams that lead to cabinets with their first aid kit, their enviro-suits, their armory. She looks back at him, her smile erased. The tilt of her head is a question Cassian wants to take his time answering, but he follows after her, anyway.

A gentle tap of his hand against one of the furthest cabinets allows a panel to slide open, revealing shelves of ration bars and cubical vitamin supplements. He doesn’t look over quickly enough to see Jyn wrinkle her nose, but the gentle puff of air that escapes her is enough of a reaction for him.

“We’ll need enough for our wait time, at least,” he says. He’s a quiet man by nature, but his voice still seems to echo off the walls of the lower deck. “Maybe more, depending on how long it takes to drag us home and if the retrieval team remembers to bring supplies.”

One of Jyn’s hands goes tight at the word “home”; Cassian makes note but doesn’t comment. Instead, he takes a step away from the pseudo-pantry. When the tilt of Jyn’s head becomes more pronounced, he nods towards the shelves.

“Aren’t you going to start?”

Some of the tension leaves her, at that – or, at least, it is redirected. Jyn’s eyes narrow. She does as he suggests, however, stepping forward. Her shoulders are too small to really keep Cassian from the pantry, but she does her best to block him out. He watches as she bites her lip, her careful fingers lifting up the individually wrapped ration bars so she can better study them.

She builds five piles, after her curiosity has been satisfied. Cassian falls into the pattern she establishes; for every ration, there is a vitamin pack. Water bottles are retrieved from a separate cabinet and set a little further away, but there are five collections of those, as well. Jyn moves with trained precision, her expression carefully blank as the piles refuse to grow larger.

Cassian spends more time watching her than he does actually counting. The lack of attention concerns him, on some distant, objective level. Subjectivity dictates that he study this new subject, this daughter of the man he’s been ordered to kill.

Jyn brushes dust off of her hands once the cabinets have been emptied entirely. She steps away from her handiwork and thins her lips. Cassian pushes the doors to the cabinets closed before he comes to stand beside her. She’s muttering under her breath, even with his back turned to her; numbers, quiet swears, and the occasional shuffle give him more than enough information about their situation. By the time he’s joined her, he has an assessment half formed in the back of his mind.

“Well?” he asks, all the same.

The glance she offers him seems to pass through him instead of settle on his features. “We need to throw someone off the ship,” she says, after a beat.

Cassian blinks at her. His head tilts, as though he hasn’t quite understood her, and a quirk of a smile starts to slide across his face.

Jyn raises an eyebrow at him, her own mouth flattening out into a thin line. “I’m serious,” she says, though her tone takes on the same cadence Cassian just _knew_ he bore at sixteen years old. “There’s enough water for the lot of us, but with this stock of rations, we’ll only be getting five hundred calories a day.”

Cassian glances over her shoulder towards the piles she’s stored up. “There are enough vitamins for everyone, right?”

Jyn nods, short and sharp.

“Then we’ll survive.” Cassian reaches over her and slides the door to the pantry closed. Jyn stares at him, her eyes widening with something like offense, but Cassian opts not to address it.

“This isn’t going to be fun, you know,” she says as he begins to walk away.

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” The dryness of his voice makes her scowl deepen all the more, though Cassian doesn’t look back to see it. He moves to the opposite end of the lower deck and slides open another storage panel, this one equipped with bacta pads. When he does glance back towards Jyn, it’s to find her staring at him, arms crossed over her chest and hip cocked out to one side.

“Are you telling me that you aren’t having fun?” he asks.

It delights some small, spark-bright part of him to see Jyn’s annoyance play out over her face. He turns away from her, expression carefully blank, and collects several of the bacta patches to take up to the guardians.

Jyn mutters something soft and dark under her breath that his ears aren’t quite good enough to hear. Her footsteps make the metal floor of the ship rattle as she starts for the ladder to the upper deck. “ _You’re_ the one telling everyone that we’re not going to be eating until we’re rescued,” she says, one hand tight on the ladder’s grey bars.

The sharpness of her punctures Cassian’s bubble of amusement, but he clings to the remnants, nonetheless. “I’ve gone without eating before,” he says as Jyn begins to ascend. “I doubt this is a trial that is unfamiliar to anyone on board.”

The lack of response after several long heartbeats is enough to make him turn away from the collection of bacta. Jyn is frozen, midway up the ladder, her knuckles white and her mouth thin. Her bottom lip has broken open; she licks it blindly to rid herself of the blood trickling down towards her chin.

Cassian’s brow furrows, even as he stares. He watches, body tense and ready to move, until Jyn shakes herself and makes herself continue climbing.

She doesn’t say anything as she disappears onto the upper deck. Neither does Cassian. The furrow in his brow grows deeper as the hull of the ship falls silent. If he closed his eyes, he knows he’d hear the gentle patter of small space rocks against the ship’s siding, but he doesn’t – doesn’t feel the need to. Instead, he stares after Jyn, puzzle pieces coming together in his head until they click and he finds himself sagging against the wall beside him.

Cassian doesn’t swear beneath his breath. Instead, the hand not cradling bacta to his chest fists itself through his hair, and a small sigh escapes chapped and frowning lips.

He takes to the ladder in silence, as well, wheels turning in the back of his mind.

*

The hours pass slowly.

K-2SO marks the path of their drift with Bodhi hanging over his shoulder and a star map laid out via pad on the console in front of them. Cassian watches them as they work and adds what helpful commentary he can, but Bodhi – well. Bodhi knows the coordinates of planets, moons, and asteroids like the back of his weathered hands; Cassian doesn’t need to assist him with his own comparatively meager knowledge.

“I spent the bulk – the bulk of my time out here,” Bodhi says, motioning out towards the blackness before them. “It was more home than anything I can remember.”

The comment comes double-edged; Cassian grimaces but nods in distant understanding.

A few feet back, the guardians have made a nest for themselves of their outer robes. Chirrut leans back against Baze, his head resting on the other man’s shoulder. They don’t speak much – Chirrut lilts off into prayer, on occasion, only to be silenced by Baze’s grumbling. When they do talk, it’s only because Jyn has coerced them into conversation, and given her own lengthy silence, these moments are…strange. The air around them shifts away from the tension at the front of the ship and lends itself to a gentleness that raises goosebumps on Cassian’s skin.

He tells them about the rations the moment he arrives amongst them. Jyn is the only one who refuses to look at him, after; the guardians nod, Bodhi hums, and K-2SO lets out a dramatic huff.

“Well, I suppose I’ll just starve, then,” the droid says. Bodhi lets out a haphazard chuckle, and Chirrut grins, unabashedly pleased.

Baze grunts. Cassian shakes his head and smiles. Jyn looks away.

Her conversation, now, with Chirrut is hushed; when Cassian glances backwards, he sees her hand hovering around her own throat. He has a wild, reckless thought that maybe Chirrut really _is_ a Jedi; stories of civilians and Imperial officers alike falling to Darth Vader’s invisible Force have made their way through the Rebellion more than once. Jyn looks no more strained for breath than usual, however, and Chirrut’s raised hand hovers, gentle, though clasped around something Cassian can’t see. He never stares for long – when his gaze lingers, Baze glares and readjusts the position of his cannon where it rests on his knee.

It’s only when his stomach grows too tight that he invites the question of dinner. His crew offers varying grunts of consent, though Jyn’s is the softest (not that he’s listening for hers in particular; rather, it’s the stiffness that overtakes her entire form that draws his attention). The exodus to the lower deck takes nearly no time; K-2SO remains at the controls with a wave of a hand and a “fine, fine, abandon me. See if I won’t steer us towards a sun.”

Cassian rolls his eyes, but the tightness of his heart relaxes, just a little, at the droid’s blithe sarcasm.

Jyn’s already in the process of retrieving the rations from the pantry by the time Cassian joins the crew. She hands the wrapped packages out with care alongside the round, white vitamins that’ll supplement whatever’s not already provided. She takes care unfolding Chirrut’s closed hand; the blind guardian shakes his head at her gentleness, but he doesn’t reject it.

The look on her face at his affectionate smile seems…confused; Cassian frowns, but he doesn’t interrupt her process.

He is the last to receive his ration bar, save for Jyn, herself. Her face is carefully blank as she presses the bar into his hand, and she turns away before he can even think of thanking her.

The hold is full of awkward silence after the pantry door slides shut. The men glance at one another, unmoving. Jyn, comparatively, sends a callous look ‘round to all of them before throwing herself down onto the floor.

“Come on,” she says without looking at anyone in particular. “Eat up.”

Cassian catches Bodhi’s eye and sees the pilot shrug. He sits down, as well, joints bending a little strangely, and accidentally bumps Jyn’s knee as he sits. She doesn’t wince, however, doesn’t look up and glare. Instead, Cassian sees a flickering of surprise pass over her face before it’s neatly tucked away.

Baze goes down next. He nudges Chirrut’s heel with his boot, and this brings the other guardian down. He nearly falls into Baze’s lap, laughing softly as he goes; Baze lets him linger for a heartbeat, maybe two, before shoving him to the side.

Cassian sits down opposite Jyn. One of the bruises on his back aches as he goes, but he ignores it. Instead, he fishes for one of the ship’s water bottles and pops it open. His vitamin goes down with ease; he wipes excess water from his lip before passing the bottle over to Baze, who stares at it with thinly veiled confusion and a bit of disdain.

“It’ll help to save it,” Cassian says. “I promise I don’t have anything contagious.”

“Not anything you know of,” the assassin replies. He takes the bottle, anyway, and downs his vitamin with the same speed Cassian did.

(Cassian is struck, for a moment, by a memory of Fest, as he watches the bottle make its way around the circle. The strong smells of wood and incense fill his nose, and an image: his mother to his left, his father to his right, and a man in blue robes standing in front of them all, offering up a cup of wine so thick he thinks it was purple instead of the standard red.)

Jyn hesitates when she receives the half-empty bottle of water. Her vitamin dances between her fingers; a game, Cassian thinks, that she uses to distract herself as much as to retain her skill. She looks up at him as she takes her drink and keeps eye contact the whole time. When the seal between her mouth and the bottle breaks, she sputters, but remains dignified, nonetheless.

Bodhi takes the last of the water and presses his forehead against the container before passing it back to Cassian. Unsure of what to do with it, Cassian keeps it at his side.

“Alright,” he says into the steady silence. “Let’s eat.”

Chirrut snorts as he tears open the packaging of his ration bar. He sniffs it with care as Baze does the same, his nose wrinkling as he does. “What is this?”

“Dinner.” It’s not Cassian who speaks, nor Jyn in her sarcasm, but Bodhi. He looks over to Chirrut, head tilted. “I ate these all the time when I was on a job.”

Jyn rips into her wrapping with particular viciousness.

“They’re not good,” Bodhi continues, though he sends a stray glance over towards Jyn. “But they get the job done.”

Chirrut huffs, then moves a hand out towards Baze’s nearby knee. Baze, in the process of staring down his own bar, idly pats the hand when it lands.

Cassian watches them for a moment longer, then looks away, shaking his head. The bars are far from appealing, but they’re calories, and it’s better than nothing when they’re floating aimlessly in space.

His eyes still flick to Jyn as he takes his first bite.

She’s staring at her bar with a distant look in her eye. Some of the color that had returned to her cheeks has drained again; she looks, for lack of a better word, fragile. Cassian nearly chokes at the thought; his caught breath is enough for Baze to look at him, sharp with concern. He lifts a hand to pound Cassian on the back, but Cassian waves him away and swallows with care.

Jyn doesn’t look at either of them throughout the whole ordeal. She continues to make eye contact with her ration bar.

“Jyn.” Her name escapes without him meaning to say it; Cassian doesn’t quite wince as she refocuses on him, but it’s a near thing.  She glances between him and her ration bar before gently setting the unwrapped bar on the floor.

“I’m not hungry,” she says.

Cassian narrows his eyes. Chirrut moves his hand from Baze’s knee, his brow furrowing; Bodhi glances up and moves his hair away from his face so that his eyes are clear.

“Jyn,” Cassian says again.

“I said I’m not hungry,” she snaps. Her hand rises to her throat again, and Chirrut’s hand lands on her knee. Her jaw goes tight, but her eyes – Cassian has seen fear in the eyes of many people he’s known, sometimes even in the eyes of people he’s cared about. Fear in Jyn’s eyes makes the food in his mouth turn to dust.

“Okay.”

(He doesn’t know that her meals, after Saw Gerrera had abandoned her, consisted of the ration bars he’d left her with, and after that, nothing at all. He doesn’t know that, after a week or two without eating, the bars were all she could stomach; it took months for her body to adjust to nutrients thicker or heartier than thin soup or more rations, always rations.)

(He doesn’t know that her last and best meal was in the Rebellion mess, and that as she ate it, she’d hoped – she’d wondered – she’d thought –)

Rustling sounds overhead. Cassian swallows down the last of his ration bar and looks upward to see the light of K-2SO’s optical sensors gleaming down at the lot of them from the deck above.

“I have good news,” the droid informs them in his standard monotone. “Mr. Rook’s modifications have not reactivated the hyperdrive, but they have allowed us to regain power over the movement of the ship. We will be able to continue forward at 19.56 miles per second.”

Cassian nearly sags with relief. Bodhi lets out a tentative, celebratory cry, and Chirrut raises a victorious fist into the air. Jyn and Baze exchange brief looks that Cassian doesn’t see, but Jyn cracks a smile and Baze offers up a nod.

“Cassian,” K-2SO continues, “and Mr. Rook. If you join me, we can plot out a course that will allow us to meet with the retrieval team in sixteen hours’ time.”

“We’re on our way up,” Cassian says. He clambers to his feet, kicking over the empty water bottle as he goes. It rolls towards Bodhi, who picks it up as he, too, stands. He passes it back to Cassian as he walks towards the ladder with a shrug and a “I don’t know where the trash compactor is on this thing.” Cassian snorts as he goes to follow him.

The water bottle doesn’t go into the trash compacter; rather, he tucks it into one of the oversized pockets of his tan pants and forgets about it.

Before he’s made his way up the ladder, though, he hears the telltale sound of a wrapper being torn open. A quick glance over his shoulder shows Jyn, her head bowed over the revealed ration bar, looking far too serious for a woman about to engage in a casual dinner.

Cassian turns away before she or the guardians can catch him staring, but he touches the empty water bottle as he climbs, and he wonders.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. All the statistics in this piece are made up, though I did borrow the initial drift of the U-Wing from the speed the ISS goes when circling the Earth. Science! Mathematics! Not my thing.
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
